


Comorbidity

by Outside_Context_Problem



Series: The Troll War [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Almost that is, Finally…peace, Metaphysics and storytelling, Multi, The Beginning of the End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outside_Context_Problem/pseuds/Outside_Context_Problem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The existence of two fatal problems can often lead to the best solution.</p><p>Sometimes you can only solve one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exile of Ascension

Milky Way Galaxy. Estimated time until entry of the Galactic Center: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

You inhale sharply through your nose and straighten a little. Eridan shifts his grip to support you again. You don't turn around, but you can feel them. And without doing anything, you know the mess of winds raking the bridge has snapped into a calm crossbreeze.

"Hi, guys." It takes you a minute to place that raspy cough of a voice as yours.

"Hey, John." And what else does a cool dude need to say?

W--EEL, it's about time!  
not about time but its a part  
it's about everything.  
you guppys are wworse than fef at wwordplay. just tell em already johnny.  
what's to tell, dan?  
our target is lord english, scratch's boss.  
the green glow of reality is his countdown.  
and he's eating time back from the future.  
we're going to crash into him with the force of every metaphysical concept we've got here.  
and that ladies and gentlemen  
is a motherfucking john egbert plan  
welcome back buddy

 

You retreat to the captain's chair, Eridan on your left, Vriska on your right, each of them holding on to you while your hands are immobile hooks clamped onto the armrests. Eridan's hand gently covers yours. Vriska is latched to your collarbone. You refrain from chuckling. Everything is fluid now (or gaseous, but that just makes a silly metaphor). You don't have pillars, you have currents.

"So what's the specifics, fearless leader?" Dave asks, and maybe his Boris Badenoff is just indulging you, but he's doing it anyway.

"Umm. I was being literal, Dave. We're going to crash the ship into him. With a payload of - fine, fine, Dan, you win - sixteen gods."

You wait.

"No objections? Anybody? Vris, Eq, Rose, Karkat?"

"How the fuck else are we gonna fight _that_ , John? _Crash our spaceship and superhuman powers into the bad guy_ makes as much sense as anything else!" Your gene-sibling provides the only response, pointing from her console to the display of green stars. "Besides, I want to see the explosion this shit will make!"

Well. That's a relief. You lean forward, hands still locked. Eridan lets you go; Vriska doesn't, leaning over you, putting another eighty kilos or so on your back.

"Breath through the particle collectors, Time around the null Ring core, Light in a protruding cone from the hull, Space links Time and Light, Doom and Mind provide the defensive line behind Light's opening, Void opens a gap field encircling, Blood and Life and Hope and Rage and Heart share among us all. Do what comes naturally, let it all link up the way it feels right."

You smirk.

"And yeah, Dave, that one was a softball. I'm back, baby."

 

Galactic Center. Estimated time to event horizon of supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*: 19 minutes

You slow for the gravitic chaos of the Center, weaving between ancient red main sequence stars and the multi-layered supermassives.

You slow for the gravitic chaos of the Center, weaving between ancient red main sequence stars and the multi-layered supermassives.

You have no real need to slow. Nothing mortal can stop your _**Sovereign Slayer**_ now.

But this is the first time any thinking being has been here. You want to enjoy the view.

"This isn't going to finish him off in one blow." You suppose it's a good thing that everyone just takes this for granted, trusting in your ~~plot knowledge~~ experience and wisdom. "But it'll hurt him."

"So we're going for the _everyone dies, we hope the bad guy catches an infection from the splinter we give him_ tactic?"

"Who the fuck said we were gonna die, Dave?" Mad grin. Insane-mad. Whatever. They know you're not stable and you're better that way.

"We're towing a stream of charged plasma with a larger volume than Sol and we're planning to collide with some kind of incarnation of entropy, John. Coming back from death isn't the same thing as coming back from _annihilation_."

Striders. What pessimists. Oh well. Time to break it to them.

"You're right, Dave! We won't be coming back from this one."

"You expect a fundamental transformation." Aw, Rose _always_ guesses your complex tricks before they finish. You were really hoping to sling one around her metaphysically. Well, she is the Guide of Light, it was unlikely to start.

"Well, yeah. I wouldn't have us brawling for fun and practicing the meta-mojo if I didn't think we'd get a shot to go at it! Death is only the beginning. Matter and energy are never erased, only transformed, and we are very, _very_ persistent patterns."

"Are you thaying we're going to tranthform into energy beingth?" Captor seems to get how awesome that would be, at least.

"Conceptual energy. I mean, you've all felt it, right? These titles and forms that have just _attached_ to us, so real that I could name them just by looking at you. We're not just people any more. We're _ideas_. The embodiment of philosophical fundamentals. Breath, Heart, Blood, Mind, Life. Rage, Hope, Doom. Time, Space, Light, Void. It's like we're taking the next step." You quirk a grin his way before he can say anything. "But we're not becoming gods, Dan. We're _Powers_ , contained in mortal shells."

You tap your lip. "Well, contained for now, anyway!"

"John, I hate to burst your newly returned insanely fucking cheery bubble, but becoming a concept doesn't look like a gogdamn end result with any more individuality than dying." Karkat manages his softest snarl, and you feel an renewed kinship for the clever little bastard. Only luck that from birth, he was outcast and you were celebrated. Under the shells you're very much the same.

You flicker your eye, trigger a few neurocontrols, and emit a faint buzzing. "The forcefield is because I expect you to throw things and/or yourselves at me."

Without letting Dave talk, you rush on. "The Narrative will make it work." You keep talking, because you haven't been stopped yet and that's really how you work. "Every narrative ends - story, parable, game - but its players live on conceptually. They become recognizers for traits, ideas, events. Summaries for life."

You do finally stop for breath, and stand. To your slight surprise, nobody is shouting you down. "But we're not just a story. That's what Scratch saw us as, that's what English is attacking us as - things inside narrative confinement."

"But you believe we aren't?" Skeptical Rose, what would you do without her? Every good routine needs a straight person to bounce the lines off.

"We're the _meta-narrative_. Think about it! We're not a story, we're a story _about_ stories."

"The fuck, John? The fuck." Dave flashes irises to indicate MASSIVE SERIOUSNESS.

But you are _into it_ now, and there's gonna be no stopping you.

"Our lives are structures of heroism, from soldier to scientist, ruler to rebel. None of us is perfect, all of us have stumbled, but _we are here_. At the end of the story. Except." Big buck-tooth grin and stand, turn, gaze over everyone in the audience. Stage directions in your head are fine when _you_ wrote them.

You're Captain John Egbert: actor, writer, and director of reality right now.

"Fuck that! No credits rolling, no fade to black, and no last stands. We're - aw, fuck it. You all know what I'm saying." Disarming smile, full John honesty, and flourish. "It's time to break the paradigm, and that just means we need to move to a new venue."

"That being the conceptual field of reality." Rose, dry even discussing her own sort-of death.

"Yup. Oh, and odds are our enemy is coming from there, so we're not talking instant retirement. Sorry, guys! I know how little you wanted a climactic and catharctic final battle with the incarnation of bad endings, but I _guess_ we'll have to pull that off somehow. Objections?"

"He's gonna buuuuuuuurn." Cold eyes, fiery gaze, Vriska is up from her seat, hand on your shoulder, dragging you down to your own chair.

"Sagittarius A-Star is causing gravitic field fluctuations. Still manageable," Tavros reports.

"Full power to everything, focus on offensive patterns from meditative practice. We're going to break through and we're going to _crush_ Lord English in one nice stab."

"Time to ride the wind."

Dave groans at your awkward pun, and all is right with the universe.


	2. Multiplicity in Solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While a panacea remains implausible, multiple contagions may be subject to the same cure if they originate from the same source.

null

"Soooooooo? Is this supposed to shake me or something?"

You wave your arm impatiently at the endless, featureless, forceless whiteness.

"I'm Captain John Egbert. I've been born to science and survivors, been nurtured by the love of my world, seen the stars and crashed back down, been blood-brother to an alien, fought my lover, found the missing people of my self, and ascended into mimesis. If you want to drive me insane, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TRY HARDER!"

Your howling to the beyond is not answered.

You float. You start to slip. You lose your sense of time, of self. You talk, you babble mindlessness- _No. This is a really dumb and unoriginal ending!_

_Let's see what I can do if I work hard enough…_

_Ahem. Okay:_ And then ~~I~~ **you** see something.

_You walked ten hours in the howling winds with Dave before you gave up. Before you let his suit slip from your gloves and admitted he was dead. You kept walking because you had nothing else you could do. in the cave you bumped into the alien, literally bumped, and you both screamed rage at the same time. Your gauntlets are coated in dried crimson. You've picked up very, very weak signals from an encampment another thirty hours of hiking away. There are worse ways to die._

"Booooooooo!" You make sure to cup your hands around your mouth. Gotta _project_ when you're mocking the void, after all! "You're giving me an alternate death reel and there's no _popcorn_?! Low-budget! Poor hospitality! I'm filling out a negative feedback report!"

_You tighten your grip, and insolence becomes choked gasping. The blue-caste struggles, but she can do little against a mind armored by hatred and body girded by plasteel. The psychic powers of these alien scum are their only conceivable strength, and you wonder once more, as you snap your fingers and your squad begins executing her menials, why this worthless species is even worth conquering in the grand name of Terra Imperial. You are the finest creation in the universe, and extraterrestrial worms like these so-called trolls are barely suitable to kill, let alone subjugate. Already you have slain their finest warrior, stalked and eaten their finest hunter, harried and tortured their deadliest insurgent, and now you crush their finest tactician after annihilating her minuscule fleet with a single ship. You have brought glory to the Empress of Terra, and to yourself. One day you will slay her and take your rightful place as her heir, but today you revel in simple pleasures, and snap Serket's neck._

"Ooh, very nice. Evil John. Are we in a morality play? What's the lesson, "you too can be evil, join now"? So _what_. Yeah, I could be a fucked-up son of a bitch. Anyone could. And I might _not_ , too. Two people I love are imperial nobles, but they're damn good common rebels too! My heart and my conscience are troll soldiers, and I don't _care_ if there's a universe where I've killed them, because _this_ me, _this_ John, has every goddamned intention of dying for them!"

You glare at the blankness, dare it to refute you. You know it hasn't got _shit_. **You** are real. Becoming more so every moment you remember, every piece of narrative you construct, every chapter of your story that you make real by living it. Fleet Captain John Egbert, lover of Vriska Serket and Eridan Ampora, moirail to Equius Zahhak and Nepeta Leijon, brother of Dave Strider and Karkat Vantas. This is **your** story.

_Karkat dies fighting, but it doesn't console you that he takes Terezi with him. Dave's dead. Thirty worlds are lost, four billion humans dead, two billion trolls. You'd be a retired cripple if you weren't needed for the war, ugly metal arm and eyepatch barely enough to manipulate your console as pilot. The troll rebellion is crushed, the might of the Empire is only barely restrained by the cunning and brutal insurgency tactics of the human forces still willing to fight. You do what you can, but you're only mortal. With the technological gap, creative tactics can only make this a war of attrition instead of a massacre. Not that it matters much to you any more. The containment suit is down to ten minutes of oxygen, and the destroyer is making another pass to scan and burn survivors of your ship. You consider just opening your radio to make it end now, but **you can't. Death is imminent, yet you will NOT go down without a fight.**_

"You see? I'm _leaking_ into the other stories! I'm being _embedded_. You can't change me! I'm not just one story any more, I'm many!"

Then you will have to have many endings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hint: Highlighting the above will make the ending slightly less confusing!


	3. John: Finish the Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ultimately, we find that a particular treatment is not required. Equilibrium can be maintained with a wide variety of approaches, so long as the operant philosophy is followed: the sum of all systems can never be changed, only the status of individual systems.

You frown.

"You're supposed to be dead. I was **pretty sure you were dead.** And when I'm pretty sure about something, **it's usually true.** "

Oh, yes, but really, Mr. Egbert, it's not that hard to set up contingencies for after one's time is over. Death is really just a curfew when one is omniscient. And do stop trying to edit the scene. The author has me here for a reason.

You chuckle. Narrative awareness only gets you so far, you suppose. "Yeah, I guess I needed somebody to fight, huh? Only, I was pretty sure that's what your boss is for."

The one I serve is without peer at destruction, Mr. Egbert, and your entropic title belies your creative capabilities. You are somewhat of a bringer of revelations, are you not? The perquisites of being the narrative's firstborn. Thus are my own talents rendered temporarily more useful than my master's. Where axes cannot kill a forest, poison must suffice.

"And how are you go gonna pull that off, buddy? I'm **the Hero** right now, and I've been building this saga for years. **We can't fail.** "

But your patrons can.

"Like hell. My family's written into this. **I'm not alone** , and **victory doesn't depend on me**."

You have forgotten your externalities.

The Noble Circle of Horrorterrors is nonlinear.

Your alien puppeteers' death will echo backwards, robbing you of all they had granted. Without them, you have no stardrives. No strange worlds and rescues that stretch the bounds of probability and good taste. No godhood.

"And you have no prisoner-lusus to siphon power into Her Imperious Condescension." Like he's gonna throw you off with that puppeteers crack. It figures he wouldn't get that you can't be manipulated by alien unreality-squids.

Irrelevant. Both the trolls and your gullibility. My master will destroy you all without a rival to empower you. And I do not lie.

"Sure. But **you're looking from the wrong angle.** "

And with that one, **you make him.**

A little rag-man, a dome for a head, in a green suit. A creature from a child's tale. **In your plane, on your level.**

Yes, yes, very nice. You may now bring your strife upon me.

Having resurrected me in physical form. Restoring me to existence to serve my master with greater power, weakening your precious causality, just as I had long ago foreseen. Feel free to vent your rage, it does not matter how you attempt to assault me.

"Now why," and you crook a smile, "would I ever want to _fight_ you?" Your teeth glimmer in a nonexistent light and **you approach**. "I'm not a killer at heart, Scratch. I just adapted to the theme. I'm a reader. And lately, because there's nobody else that can do it, I'm a **storyteller**."

It will be impossible for you to create when you have been removed from existence, Mr. Egbert.

You raise a finger. The best, best part is coming up: **The Reversal**.

"But the story lives on."

You will not exist. Other incarnations of John Egbert will lack your understanding, and will soon be removed.

"I'm not a man any more, Scratch."

You are not a deity.

"Better. **I'm an archetype.** You can't remove the ideas I am - exploration, leadership, friendship - and I'm **part of them now**. Destroy my causality and **I remain**. The names, people, worlds, do not remove the story if they are destroyed. You can't remove an ideal."

But you are not one.

And you will find that becoming an archetype is quite impossible, Mr. Egbert.

The sum of the universe cannot be adjusted to suit you. All things are as they are by the immutable laws beyond laws, which only my master may break.

"I'm not making or breaking, Doc." You put your hands on the shoulders of what is, after all, **just an inanimate puppet**. "I'm becoming," you continue in a whisper. "Why escape, why control or crush or corrupt when we can **be.** There are archetypes enough for us all. And in enacting, and becoming, we put parts of ourselves into our roles. We'll be there every time the story's told. A reluctant hero. A reactionary who reforms. A rebel born into a world that hates him. We're almost archetypical ourselves, just enough personality slapped on the outside to matter." You chuckle. "With the occasional human foible-slash-editing error."

You reach out and pop off that dome. Sling it under your arm. There's no gravity to pull the body down, no flat surface for it to lie on. But narrative convention makes what was Doc Scratch collapse when his head is pried off.

**You do it.**

**You make it happen.**

 

Stepping into the John-shaped hole in the finale isn't hard, and assimilating to the mind-crackling, strobing, exploding, imploding, causality-warping battlefield is pretty easy compared to some of the stuff you've been asking your mind to do lately.

You're fighting inside of a sun. And on a plane of red dust sprinkled with blown-up, weirdly distorted Statues of Liberty. And through the rooms of a mansion of green.

You **have been here, fighting alongside your cohort.** You're a leader in theory, sure, but so are Karkat, Feferi, Eridan, even Vriska; what you have been doing is **fighting with Nepeta and Equius**. Your hand has always been there, shielding the back of your brother, launching your sister as a living missile. It's what you always **will have/would have** done.

"John…" Dave wonders, in the middle of ducking behind a pillar/surfing a photosphere wave/firing from prone in the sand. "Time isn't right…"

"Time's just fine, Dave." You toss the white sphere between hands, **the ball just large enough to get your whole hand around it**. "I just needed to make a slight edit to the manuscript."

Dave has no response, but his fading-back reverted-futureself just grins and shakes his head.

Vriska rolls a set of dice/spinning blade/captive singularity in one hand, and wraps an arm around your shoulders.

"John. It's not ending here, okay? Because I will _drag you from oblivion itself_ if I have to. Because nobody else is _nearly_ as fun to adventure with." She punctuates her speech with a slug on the arm/light peck/frenzied make-out.

"Can't top that, Johnny, but if ya die I'm gonna spread all kindsa filthy lies 'bout you," Eridan puts in, embracing/leaning/pinning you. Chaos detonates nearby while he grabs your ass. "So fer yer dignity, pull through."

You give them exactly the attention they need to stay focused on the firing line, then you dive into the havoc.

A hail of destruction ripping time **crashes against the wall** of glimmering light surrounding Vriska, a storm of souls from Nepeta's essence-shredding claws **smashes the barriers of your foe** , the clutching, howling _NEEDS_ of the void drain from English and through Equius into you, and it's **-/--/-STILL NOT ENOUGH**.

You can't alter that one. You've kinda contributed to it yourself. This is **The Final Boss**. the last threat to you.

That's okay. Invulnerable enemy? Impossible odds? Everyone you love on the line?

**It's all just fueling you up**.

You need some attention, though.

Solar winds, particle streams, indoor hurricanes, floor-creaking gusts, duststorms, sandstorms. You add in one last thing to each attack, just for good measure: a voice.

**"Hey, ugly! Over here. You overhyped, narcissistic, outmoded paradigm!"**

Lord English, Lord of Time, ender of existence, bane of what is, predator of what was, digester of what would have been, is focused on you.

Hm. You've just realized. You're not entirely sure if this is a martyrdom story or a happy ending.

It **will go on** either way.

But right now, with the future's death staring you in the face, you realize something: you'd really like to be alive to enjoy it.

You have one infinite moment ( **pen above paper** ) to compose it, the perfect line or the last words. You shrug, smile, and launch the cue ball that was the head of Scratch at English.

**"Update."**

The before inverted to after touched to the reverting devourer, the vessel restored against the hatchling from within - opposing concepts, in the end. Chaos and entropy that just can't decide how organized they're going to get. 

It just kinda made sense. You've spoiled Lord English's plotline for himself. 

And

possibility

collapses.

### Hello, John.

hi. been expecting you.

### The words that will be having been said-

don't bother! i didn't believe a damn thing. scratch couldn't see. different isn't evil. :)

### Thank you. We would offer you-

thanks! but we're kinda beyond anything even you can offer. well… there is one thing!

remember us.

next/last time your existence is challenge, imagine us up. trickster hero, idealist outcast, sardonic spy, self-fearing mechanic, reluctant repentant. all of us, yanno?

because i promise you one thing.

## we'll be there

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it ends. Not with a bang or a whimper, but the wall of text it deserves.
> 
> I'm finally done.
> 
>  
> 
> More or less.
> 
> I'm intending to gradually go back and finish Metastasis, since I wanted to do at least one chapter from every (god tier) POV. Which, since I forgot Rose and Jade but double-counted Karkat, means that should actually be 3/7 chapters done. Oh well.
> 
> There's also going to be a couple follow-up style stories, both in the Troll Wars 'verse and related to it, but they should be short one-shots. Including a couple crossovers with obscure sci-fi series, because whynot.
> 
> Next on the agenda, however, is a swords & sorcery style (a little more Moorcock than Howard) troll/human story which will actually vaguely approximate original fiction. Only with borrowed concepts. Also John and Equius make cameos. Okay, not that original, but it should be fun.
> 
> Thank you, everyone who's read Troll War, and especially those who've commented - extra applause for those with critical comments that helped me alter things that were stupid, vague, or totally bullshit scientifically speaking, and I'll pour a full 40 on the sidewalk for anyone who actually read the entire damn thing. Good lord, you must be nearly as bored as _I_ am.
> 
> Specific acknowledgements:
> 
> OtherCat - _contra legem_ was the kick in the pants that got me saying "fuck it, I should just write some sci-fi fanfic and hope it's that good".
> 
> Twilit (Twilight) - _Time on Our Side_ is a seriously good Aradia/Dave fic that remains extraordinarily more canon-compliant than mine. And I love the alienated Dave; real emotion in unreal situations makes the finest sci-fi. It provided a lot of my motivation to write Dave chapters/stories.
> 
> childishGambino - _Herding Cats_ made me think of some of the relationships I used, and for being fucking magnificent.
> 
> Andrew Hussie has the biggest webcomic in existence, 2.5 million dollars, and hardly needs my acknowledgement, but I'm just thanking him here, as a guy who read everything on teamspecialolympics.com, went through the entire Problem Sleuth run while it was active, and loved the fuck out of every JAndrew Edits TNG clip, to remind the internet you don't have to be a 14 year old with a tumblr trollsona to think Homestuck is fucking fantastic. It really, really is.


End file.
